There is a conflict of opinion in
the upper corridors of the BBC. The optimists are saying, ‘things are
not as bad as they were after Hutton.’ The realists reply: ‘that’s
right – they are much worse.’

Lord Hutton’s verdict three years ago into the circumstances
surrounding the death of deep-throat Ministry of Defence official David
Kelly swept away the BBC’s director-general and chairman, and left the
corporation dangling in a storm of Blairite bile. But there followed a
counter-wave of public support that forced the politicians to back off,
saw Michael Grade made chairman and Mark Thompson director-general and
steered the BBC to a plateau of safety with the ten-year renewal of its
royal charter.

That was then, this is now. Grade quit two months ago in
disillusionment with the new governing set-up to join the rival ITV,
Thompson failed to secure the level of funding he said the BBC needed
and the public responded negatively to his inflated licence-fee bid. No
candidate with insider cred has emerged among the 23 applicants who
want to chair the revamped BBC Trust, which has replaced the Board of
Governors. The future has never been so uncertain and the mood upstairs
at Broadcasting House, already bleak, is about to get a lot darker.

A week ago, in a little-noticed ruling, the headless BBC Trust,
chaired for the time being by Chitra Bharucha, a Northern Ireland
clinical haematologist, sent up a signal of how the BBC will be
administered in the years ahead. Rather than being broadly supervised
by laisssez-faire governors, it is to be regulated by knuckle-rappers
who will rein in the BBC from entering public controversy and unfair
competition, stifling its freedom of action.

The question facing the Trust last week was whether the BBC could
continue offering free downloads of music and programmes, a key element
in its I-player internet strategy. Ofcom, the state regulator, had
already pronounced sombrely on the matter, warning that certain types
of download - such as book readings and classical concerts - posed a
potential threat to commercial operators. Books, said Ofcom, should be
excluded from downloads and, as regards to music ‘the BBC should
specify much more tightly the range of classical content they propose
to make available.’

That seemed fair enough. Radio 3, which scored 1.4 million hits for
its Beethoven downloads in 2005, took note of the caveat and limited
itself to planning free single movements and short extracts to
accompany its Tchaikovsky week – akin in length and lightness to what
Sir Thomas Beecham used to call ‘musical lollipops.’ The record
industry had no objections. The trust, however, cracked down.

In a ruling that is literally incomprehensible, Dr Bharucha and her
chums argued that – contrary to the Ofcom statement – ‘it was
Ofcom’s view that classical music should be entirely excluded.’ All
Ofcom actually said was that the BBC should ‘specify’ its range of
classics, but that was not enough for the policemen of the
Trust.

They have decided that there must be no music downloads from
Radio 3 any more, despite their overwhelming popularity and the
fundamental justification that since the public pays for BBC orchestras
it should be entitled to access their work. It means, for instance,
that Radio 3 cannot continue with such admirable educational tools as
‘Discovering Music’ which is aimed at schoolchildren, or offer free
extracts from the British Composer Awards which introduce rising talent
to a wider audience.

The ruling effectively chops the legs off Radio 3 in a fluid
market where record magazines, national newspapers, orchestral websites
and any Tom, Dick and Harry in a back bedroom can all offer classical
music for free. Only the BBC is forbidden to do so, clamped in chains
by the very Trust that is supposed to supervise its best
interests.

The ban will not go through without a fight. It is, as the
pen-pushers put it, ‘subject to consultation’ and there are indications
that Mark Thompson, privately a classical fan, will put a strong
argument to the next chair of the BBC Trust whoever that may
be.

There is also the voice of the listener to be taken into account.
Protests have started sputtering on the Radio 3 message board and there
is an address - trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk - for the public to tell Dr
Bharucha what it thinks.

Whatever the outcome, though, this marks the beginning of a new
era for the BBC, an age of clipped wings and shortened horizons in
which inexpert individuals appointed by an interfering government will
destroy vision and make producers work to rule.

It hardly matters who becomes chair of the Trust. A restrictive
precedent has been set, and it substantially limits the BBC’s operating
freedoms in the decade ahead.

This is the finest Bruckner I have heard from a young
conductor since Franz Welser-Möst started shaving. The Canadian in
charge is 31 years old and has just been appointed to succeed Valery
Gergiev in Rotterdam. He shapes the gigantic Adagio at the heart of
this work, a tribute to the dying Wagner, with austere and respectful
restraint. The performance as a whole is marked by a fastidious refusal
to emote and a structural certainty that seems uncanny in a maestro of
such little experience. Within the massive score, he teases out
decorative details from the woodwinds and lower strings, cleaning up
the old warhorse as if it were about to run at Ascot. The opening of
the finale is positively frisky and the playing of Montreal’s second
orchestra is flawless, world-class. Nézet-Séguin is unquestionably the
talent to watch. He makes his London debut at the South Bank on March
9; miss it if you dare.